This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.

This is a song by Kishore Kumar from the film LOVE IN BOMBAY-made in 1971, but released in 2013.
Initially, Joy Mukherjee was my favourite hero. His first film-Love in Shimla-1960 was almost immediately after Shammi Kapoor’s ‘Dil deke Dekho”-1959, introducing ASHA PAREKH. Within a span of just one year, we saw TWO New Heroines,who were ‘just the medicine the Doctor ordered’ for the young ones in 1960. Like Shammi,Joy too had a filmi pedigree.Both were tall, handsome, well built and would make ‘miss a heartbeat’ in any young girl those days!

in my opinion, being a Bong,Joy Mukherjee had a kind of sweetness in him. He was-arguably- a better looking Hero than Shammi Kapoor. This is no comment on their acting prowess-if any and if they them at that time.

Having enjoyed other entertainers from Joy like, Ek haseena ek musafir, Ziddi, and phir wohi dil laya hoon, I realised that slowly Joy too became a prisoner of the popularity cult and his films started losing charm.

By the 70s, Joy was already looking older, with receding hairline. When we heard that he was making ” Love in Bombay”,in the early 70s, we anxiously awaited the film, not to see Joy, but to see and enjoy the songs of Kishore Kumar, who had immortalised his role in Padosan-1968. But unfortunately the film never came out nor any songs of that film were heard, so we all forgot about it.

Now suddenly the film LOVE IN BOMBAY has surfaced and was released in some Multiplexes. somehow, I did not feel like seeing the film now. Then last week, my friend invited me to see this film and out of curiosity, I went to see the film. Just in the first half of August I had read the review of this film, done by our friend Dustedoff here . This also prompted me to go see the film.

Honestly, what can be my reaction be to a 40 year old film in which my one time favourite hero had acted ?

The film Love in Bombay was the third in the series of “Love in -” movies, viz. Shimla, Tokyo and Bombay. This film was produced by Joy Mukherjee himself and he, reportedly, spent a very large amount on making this film and which put him under financial trouble. Ultimately there was no money left to release the film.

His son MUNJOY MUKHERJEE gave an interview to Rediff.com. When asked why the film was released after 40 odd years, he gave explicit details. I am providing here a concise version of that interview, for our readers-with sincere thanks to Rediff.com. This will also tell how a son took efforts to fulfil his Father’s dream….

Love in Bombay is the most expensive movie ever to be released.

The first few reels were shot on a ship. The film cost Rs 30 lakh to Rs 35 lakh (Rs 3 million to Rs 3.5 million). At today’s rates, that would be anything between Rs 300 crore to Rs 350 crore ( Rs 3 billion to Rs 3.5 billion).

If Joy Mukherjee had bought land in the 1970s for that much money, it would be worth Rs 300 crore today.

After investing a huge amount of money in making the film, he did not have any money left to release the film.

Joy did try to release the movie in the 1980s and 1990s as the movie was a labour of love, but it was too costly to do so.

When satellite premieres of films came into fashion in 2000, his son told him, ‘Let’s have the film released on television, let’s have a world satellite premiere.’ But he wanted it released in a theatre, not on television.

Each time the son spoke about releasing the movie, Joy would shut him up. He never even told him where the reels of the film were stored.

Son would tell him that there is no such film called “Love in Bombay”, and that he was lying.

No one had even heard the songs from the film.

When he was pestered about the film finally in November 2011 Joy decided, “Let’s try to release the movie. We will release it in March 2012.”

As fate would have it, Joy Mukherjee passed away on March 9, 2012 without telling his son where the movie was kept.

The son went into a depression after he lost his father. He was so close to him. He would not eat his dinner if it was late. They had playful chats. When he passed away, the house seemed empty.

In May, His son, Munjoy, decided to get out of bed. He felt his father was telling him ,’You are the eldest son, you have to take charge of things, you have to carry the family baton.’

The first thing he did was search for the negative.

Normally, films are kept in cold storage, at low temperatures. He started going to cold storages where film negatives are kept. One day, as he was going through his father’s bills, he saw a bill from Fazalbhoy Cold Storage, Worli (Central Mumbai).

When he called them, they told him they had the negatives for “Love in Bombay”.

He immediately went there, paid the bill and got the negatives.

The next day he started hunting for a good post-production studio. Avitel studio scanned the negative and told him that 30 to 40 per cent of the film was damaged.

The technicians also said that the film was in quite a decent condition for negatives lying around for 42 years and somebody must be taking good care of the film.

The people at the cold storage told him that Joy Mukherjee went there every year and got the negatives cleaned manually. He did not know new technology, but because of his efforts the film was in good condition.

For the next seven months they cleaned the movie three times till Munjoy was satisfied. Once the cleaning was done, they did colour correction.

The sound was a huge problem. There was no clarity and there was a hissing sound. Munjoy’s friend Mansoor Alam helped him. For three months they worked on the sound.

After a year, the film was ready.

Munjoy was trying to sell a product that was 42 years old. He was not sure who wanted to watch it.

What worked to his advantage was that there were legends like Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar, his father and Waheeda Rehman in the film.

The movie has music by Shankar-Jaikishan, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri, songs sung by Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle.

All these people were his aces.

He went to big music companies, but they did not want to release the music. The only company that saw the value of the music was HMV SaReGaMa. Munjoy had produced music albums for them and they released the music.

Munjoy went to many distributors, but they turned him down. Finally, PVR came to his rescue. They thought of releasing the movie in the PVR Director’s Rare section.

Now he had a problem with the Censor Board. His father had got the censor certificate for the film in 1974, and he was releasing the film on the same certificate.

In the film, the title appears in three languages as it did in films in those days.

The title in English and Hindi was Love in Bombay and in Marathi it was Love in Mumbai.

In those days ‘Bombay’ was called ‘Mumbai’ only in Marathi. The Censor Board wanted Munjoy to remove the Marathi name as the censor certificate is for the movie Love in Bombay.

He made those changes, but now they had a problem with the promos. In the promos, Munjoy’s and his younger brother Sujoy’s name figure as co-producers, but the actual movie has their father’s name. So, they had to remove that and get the promo approved.

If he postponed the film to promote it well, he may not have got theatres later as there are big releases coming up back-to-back like Chennai Express, Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai Dobara, Madras Cafe etc. So they decided to go with the release .

Love in Bombay was released on August 2.

Love in Bombay has created a Record. A film was made in 1971, passed by Censors in 1974 and was released in 2013- after a gap of 40 odd years. Earlier the film, “Yaar meri Zindagi” held this record. Made in 1971, it was released in 1996-a cool 25 years ! In the 60s and 70s, some more films were also delayed in getting released and it did show in the films when released after 10 or more years. I remember there was some discussion on such films on this Blog, some time back.

Seeing a film made 40 years ago has some disadvantages. First, most or many people connected with the film are not alive today. Joy Mukherjee, Rehman, Kamal Kapoor, Kishore Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Narendranath, Rajendranath, lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri, composers Shanker and Jaikishen etc have since departed. While this added to the nostalgic value to the film, the plot, presentation and acting styles etc are not digestible in the present circumstances. In the 70s or earlier, the heroes were accepted as supermen, capable of fighting on land, in Sea or in Air, they were highly educated, handsome and Rich etc. Today’s films tend to depict realities and are far from the escapist themes of yore.

The story of Love in Bombay is-

Badal (Joy Mukherjee) is a Diver, horse rider ,fighter, swimmer lover, singer and many more things. Near an island, 50 miles off Bombay stands a ship. The evil captain(Kamal Kapoor) and his funny mate(Rajendranath) watch Badal’s diving skills. Badal is offered a job to retrieve a sunken consignment od drugs for poor people-which in fact is to get sunken gold nugget consignment-. he is hired. He comes to the ship on his Horse called Cheetah. There is Mr. Mehra, a millionaire(Rehman), his pretty daughter Preeti(Waheeda), her suitor Roshan(Narendranath), son of Mehra’s close friend(Bipin Gupta) and many others. The ship is wrecked after a storm and Badal saves Preeti. Captain, his mate and many die but main characters survive. they are captured by Tribesmen who kidnap Preeti. Badal and Cheetah save her and rescue her. They fall in love but Mehra and Roshan beat Badal half dead and take away Preeti to Bombay.

Badal is saved by some kind souls and he comes to Bombay with his horse. he meets Ganpatrao (Kishore kumar) a madari with a Bhaloo. they become friends. Badal goes to meet Mehra asking for Preeti’s hand, which is refused. Mehra gives him a challenge to earn 5 lakh rupees in 3 months to get Preeti’s hand.

The rest of the story cosists of how Badal, Ganpat Rao and Cheetah the Horse fulfil the condition and how the end is sweet,afterall !

Kishore Kumar is expected to repeat his padosan-68 performance here. He is really very funny in the film, he has 3 solo songs and a duet with Mohd. Rafi too. His Bhaloo is funny, but one can make out that a man is acting in a Bhaloo’s suit.

Overall, Waheeda is lacklustre. She is totally wasted.(May be that is why she resented it when this film was released after 40 years. She neither attended the music launch nor the premiere).

The Kishore songs and the Rafi-Kishore duet is worth listening. So here is a song from Love in Bombay-Made in 1971 and released in 2013. Enjoy.